"My guess is that it'll die out. Particularly once I'm writing, I'm not sure I want to be announcing to the world that I'm lost in the midst of writing on a daily basis. "Pounding my head against a wall" at 3 pm; "Considering drinking" at 7 pm. Although it'd be interesting to twitter the writing process: 8 am: "I'm a genius." 11 am: "Was completely wrong. Everything I wrote this morning sucks." 1 pm: "Written the day off, going to see a movie." --Jason Reitman

You know what makes me feel old? Not wanting to hop on the latest technology bandwagons. I just read Go Tweet Yourself and I totally agree with her on like, every single point. Must "social media" be so lame? Whatever happened to discussions and message boards and journals (other than here) as ways to reach out to people? That involved actual talking?

Pet peeve roundup!

#1: smartphones. I adore my Palm organizer. I couldn't get it to work for several months this year and thought it had died (the button stuck and the fat hands of some dude at Best Buy fixed THAT). But I still worry about it croaking, and now that my dying laptop had to be switched to Linux, I can't sync the Palm any more. DAMMIT. Yes, I got a new laptop for Christmas (haven't opened it, it's wrapped), but that will still be on Win7 and I won't be able to sync it with that either.

But you cannot have an organizer any more that isn't attached to a phone. And a $100+ phone bill per month for the "data plan", whatever that is. What with the pay cutting and possible layoffs hanging over my head until probably 2020, I kinda don't want to triple my current phone bill right now.

I have a ghetto Nokia right now, where the numbers are mostly rubbed off the faceplate. And I never, ever text because typing in someone's name in the message book is a bitch and a half as is. I ignore all texts, which are not delivered in a prompt manner to my phone anyway. Though I did kind of find myself envying Jess's phone device (mobile...um, I forget what it is) when she was here. Useful little booger, that.

I am thinking of getting an iTouch to replace the Palm/my current iPod (still works, but can't sync it either, but seems to have more juice to it than the Palm) when it dies, since I will have a non-Linux machine I can run it off of. According to Ask Metafilter, that's about the only non-phone organizer out there now, so...

#2: Kindles and the like. You know what I used for an e-reader? My Palm. It did the same thing, PLUS other stuff like games and organization and to-do lists. And I could slip the thing in my pants pocket and yank it out while standing in line. (I could still do this, but I can't install any more books and the ones left in it right now are not the best ever.) I completely concur with this post on the cost, lack of sharing, and the fact that once your device dies in about four years, your book is gone. FEH. Now I have to rebuy books that I bought on the Palm already as is, but at least the device had other uses..

#3: Facebook. Honestly, I got bored of it after two days and everyone else is obsessed with it. But man, I just don't care about poking people, or playing the farm game, or the mafia game, or saying what I am doing in one sentence (see below) and you can't write anything on Facebook without your work or insurance looking at it and canning you or something, it seems. (At least with my blogs most of y'all know my last name by now, probably, but it's not a requirement to have that on the front fucking page for everyone to look for it.) I add friends in around once a quarter and that's it for my active participation in the thing. Bleah. But I am supposed to be addicted to Facebook like everyone else. I could use a fake name like all the Burning Man people seem to now (don't ask me how they are getting away with it. Heck, my friend made a page, not a fan page, for a stuffed lobster), but I don't like it enough to want to participate in it. It's not offering me stuff I want to do. It's nice that they have games and all, but if I'm not finding the time to keep up with KoL, I'm not going to keep up with anything else either.

The only social networking I really like using is Ravelry these days. The message boards are active, and I look up patterns constantly. I can actually DO SOMETHING with it.

#4: Twitter. I'm sorry, but NOBODY is saying anything interesting in one sentence long fragments. Not even the people who are supposed to be incredibly funny in one sentence long fragments. No, not Stephen Fry either. I have found ONE Twitter feed that actually amuses me in one sentence fragments, period.

I really hate Twitter. I'm tired of hearing about the "conversation" and how wonderful it is to only speak in one sentence fragments. Because honestly? None of y'all are saying anything interesting! Some people are actually saying they're losing the ability to write anything long! THIS DOES NOT STRIKE ME AS A GOOD THING! Doesn't our world have enough issues with people who don't want to read anything without boiling it down to only reading sentences?

I loved it when everyone started getting blogs, rather than the "old school" journallers alone. I love reading thought out entries (hello, Holidailies, lots of them, yay!). But now everyone has a goddamned Twitter and there's lots of chatter and no meat to it, no thought. Everyone quits blogging and then they Twitter and some people post the Twits they Twittered to their blogs in lieu of blogging and my eyes glaze the hell over.

And even more irritating, it seems to be mandatory now that one participate in Twitter. Apparently it is okay for random strangers to e-mail me complaining that I don't have one and I should get it? WTF? I'm kind of tempted to say, "uh, if you read my blog, where did you get the impression that I liked it and would want to have it, 'cause I poke every link making fun of it over there." But every damn website says if you want to do anything even remotely career-related, you have to Twitter constantly. Stab me, please.

Call me crazy, but if I'm going to talk on the Internet, I want to actually talk on the Internet. With more than one sentence. And paragraphs, even. And stuff I thought about beyond "man, this is boring" and "mmm, lunch." Yeah, I'm a raging narcissist, but I don't think limiting myself to typing whatever lame one-sentence thoughts that roam through my head is going to improve my writing or add anything to the world. What's the point?

And, as was well pointed out in this entry and this awesome story, we need stories. Not one-off shallow lines. STORIES. Yes, some folks can tell a story in one sentence, but who on Twitter is trying to do this? It all just boils down to shallow babble, saying nothing that anyone will remember later.

So, as per usual, I don't fit in the world, but I don't even fit in with the other geeks any more. And it sucks and it's irritating, but still not as irritating as actually posting one sentence fragments all the time, so.

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